Saturday, May 9, 2015

Everest Industry

I normally refrain from writing about Everest simply because
Everest has already been written about at least a million times by literally
every Tom, Dick and Harry and their equivalent women brigade. I wrote one post
last year after the incident where 16 Sherpas died (including few of my close
friends); and again this year nature has struck leaving many dead, injured and
dejected, disoriented and disproportionately satiated. As speculations are
flying at the speed of light in volumes defying rational readability, I felt an
unbiased to the point practical look is again necessary; not only to dismal
fears and ignorance but also to put forth objectively what many fail to
understand in totality. I know this prelude sounds confusing, but then it is
just play of words. Here follows the hard facts and figures along with hard
line thoughts without apologies to none.

I took this picture of Everest BC few days before it was all demolished

Let’s face it, whether you like it or not, Everest over the
years has become an industry. It is an industry or an assembly line if you may
call it, which provides the world’s largest tourist revenue to one of the
poorest nations in the world. No matter how many times you shut it, it will
rebound since it cannot be shut down, neither by nature, nor by human, not even
by God I suppose. Nepal’s dependence upon Everest cannot be overemphasized. The
figures speak for themselves. Over a million people directly or indirectly feed
from Everest industry. Even if we only look at the number of Everest and
surrounding peaks climbing permits issued in one year, it comes to mind-boggling
revenue of around 4.5 million USD. More than double this amount is pumped into
the Nepal economy for other things like food, transportation, lodging, Sherpa
fee, oxygen, guides, etc. Add to this the humungous volume of trekkers to
Everest base camp and surrounding valleys all through the year. They bring in
at least couple of millions more in revenues to the country.

Do the maths and you will realize that there’s no going
back. Nepal’s dependence upon Everest is absolute and final. This is one
industry in the world that will never face a permanent lock out. We will keep
floundering in this industry till doomsday. A score of dead people here and
there is nothing compared to what one gains. Loss of life is nothing to be
worried about, since death is an inevitable part of life. I don’t know how if
one dies in bed at home surrounded by
families is a death worth dying while if you die up in a mountain inside a
crevasse or suffocating under an avalanche it draws horror and disbelief,
though it makes you a posthumous hero for certain. Death is death; either you
die in the thin air or in the thick polluted air of a city.

I am always amazed that more people are not dying on
Everest. Once upon a time we had reached a respectable figure of 1 out of 10
people dying. It was something to brag about, something to debate about, but
then it fell so low that Everest suddenly didn’t seem that risky anymore. Every
Tom, Dick and Harry and their women counterparts, whoever could sum up the
figure of 50,000 USD felt had a right to climb Everest. Become the youngest (of
something) or the oldest, or the boldest or the coldest, to fly off from the top
or to fly to the top, to slide or to glide, to advocate or to vilify, to marry
or carry, to design or damage, to be or not to be, the reasons or motivations
galore would leave all of us confused. Everybody was summiting and you were a
damn fool if you didn’t or couldn’t, subject of endless ridicule. The tangible
damage to nature and pristine mountains were not really something to bother
about. After all the world was going to end soon enough so what’s a little hill
of garbage or human waste to stand between human ego and top of the world.

Obviously it was time for some shake down and notoriety that
Everest rightfully deserved. Avalanches and earthquakes are not unusual
phenomenon. They are natural phenomenon, they are supposed to happen, they
should happen. What is unusual is to see a non-climber hanging on to his Sherpa
and oxygen and making his way up through Khumbu Icefall. Bloody hell, Everest
is the world’s tallest peak, it should kill people, and it should make it so
tough for the people climbing it that only the very boldest and insane people
with adequate experience and skills should vie for her lofty summit. No one
less ordained or qualified deserves a place on the conical top. Or that’s how
nature should feel.

2014, an avalanche triggers off and kills 16 hardy Sherpas
for being where they were. The world wakes up like crazy, citing bad choice of
route, crowding, Sherpa insurance and compensation (forgetting that death
cannot be compensated, since the only compensation is to return life but that
is an impossibility), insensitivity of the clients, greed of the agencies, lackadaisical
attitude of Nepal government, etc, etc. It was all pure nonsense of course
since death is death and no one can avoid it or postpone it. When millions of
malnourished children in Africa die from hunger, when millions of kids are
forced into labour, when women are raped and abducted, when we burn each other
alive in name of religion, the world at large continues to sleep, now that is
what is more bothering. Not the death of handful of men for whom it all boils
down to occupational hazard working in the Everest industry.

Looking into the ice fall from Base Camp, Nuptse in background

Statistically Everest is not even among the most dangerous
industries in the world and in terms of hazardous occupations it is almost a
toddler. Far more people are killed in the armed forces, para-military forces,
police forces, fire fighter forces, medical emergency responders, reporters and
journalists, health workers, etc. These people die regularly from sheer
brutality, failure of systems and governments, lack of infrastructures, ignorance
and indifference. No one gives a shit, no one cares. Only the directly affected
people care since they lost something real. For the rest of us, oh what else
can you expect man, you are into a dangerous occupation. The problem with
Everest leading to this global outcry is that climbing Everest is not perceived
hazardous enough. It is dangerous but statistically it isn’t. Call it sheer
luck or nature’s benevolence that Everest has been merciful for all her life
and even today allows this human invasion into her sacred grounds.

2015, earth rumbled, few tumbled, and the world grumbled. What
an asinine joke! Less than 30 dead, around 70 injured, several hundred lost
souls floundering through the debris. Helicopters plucking people off the
mountain, others running down, few fools stayed back with the hope that the
summit was still not too far. A real circus if I have seen one. People lost
lives but more importantly lost their money. Those who died became martyrs and
greatest climbers on earth (as we say, no one speaks ill of the dead), those
who survived or lived became world’s leading authorities on mountains and
Everest, people back home became messiahs of peace and compassion. Suddenly everyone
prayed for global unity and an end to poverty and voiced their concern for
rehabilitating mother earth. I wonder how come the world unites only during a
calamity. Why don’t we reach out in times of peace and normalcy when it would
be must easier to repair and rehabilitate and facilitate. When good times
prevail everyone with money and means are busy having a good time so the whole
world looks good through coloured glasses of selfish materialistic well-being. Suddenly
shake their world, throw in one of their friends or family members in a remote
out of sight vulnerable spot and look how things transform.

It’s a selfish world we live and we all are selfish. No one
climbs Everest or does anything in life that doesn’t have some amount of self-profiteering
embedded within. Some of us cloak it well while some shout from the top of the
roof, ‘look at me, I am the one who will change the world.’ It’s so puerile, go
and first change yourself. I don’t claim any glory or immunity from human fallibility.
I am perhaps the most selfish human being on this planet since I insist that I live
selfishly, everything that I do is only and solely for my own self. And I also
climb Everest, again and again and again.

Everest will never shut down since it cannot be shut down. People
will keep climbing Everest till it is there or as long as our species remain;
and hence some of us will keep dying up there. Everest doesn’t claim victims;
it is simply doing what nature decrees. It is what it is, we die because we
venture into its icy environs, just like people die in the roads because we
choose to drive or walk on roads, just because we choose to create new lives so
they will die one day. Let us not blame Everest or nature and natural
phenomenon for human loss of life or destruction to our properties. The earth
will rumble, things will fall, earth will open up, and resources will dry up. One
day, perhaps not too far distant, we all would cease to be. Nature would
persist I suppose since it must. New species with new ambitions and aspirations
will emerge may be who will stay away from Everest for reasons best known to
them.

We will not stop dying if we stop climbing Everest, neither
will you stop dying if you stay in rich developed countries with excellent
infrastructures. Poverty is not a virtue so poor people deserve misfortune as
much as the rich ones; neither is poverty a crime so they don’t deserve
misfortune more or less than their rich counterparts. Natural disasters can
strike anyone, any nation, anywhere, any time. So this time it is Nepal, before
it was Haiti, next time it could be one of the wealthy developed nations.

Everest industry will keep churning its assembly line,
putting crowning caps on heads like jam bottles, and yes occasionally people
will die but then people die occasionally and more frequently everywhere. But worth
of a human life is certainly showcased most appropriately upon Everest; it is
directly and indiscreetly proportionate to your paying capacity. If you can pay
more, your life is more valuable. And who am I to judge if such evaluation of
human life is ethical or not, in a similar situation I am sure I too would call
up my wealthy friends and ask them to loosen their purse for a greater cause,
since I am the most worthy human on our planet and my life is most precious.

So while you should do whatever you can to help your fellow
human beings (while we continue to destroy our planet) in Nepal or elsewhere
(don’t forget the malnourished African kids, or homeless elderly widows of India,
or the victims of religious genocide) please keep climbing Everest. That is the
best and the only way we can and must support this industry.

Only thing I request is come with an open mind that anything
can happen and with better preparation and with more respect for nature and
your fellow support members. We the guides and Sherpas are human too, we will
do our best to save you, pull and push you to the summit, get you back down and
send you off with a smile (no matter how stupid or vain or unskilled you may
be) but we too have families back home and we love them dearly too; just like
you love your dear ones. And to them we are valuable.

1 comment:

Now i quite like this take on climbing on everest though i sincerely wish only hardcore climbers would climb her and not the one's with simple whims and fancies. But, then who are we to decide who's a true climber! Everest will decide herself for sure. And in the end, till you and your sherpa friends are safe, thats what matter. I guess i am selfish too! ;-)

About Me

As a child, i had three wishes: to be a submariner (i did), to be a published author (i did, but won't rest till the Nobel and Booker rest on my mantle) and to be a mountaineer (still trying to fulfill this one).I am otherwise a globe trotting thrill seeker and have climbed the seven summits and skied to both the poles and then some.

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There is a drama and beauty to be found in the world’s most hard to reach places that far exceed the intensity we experience in our normal everyday lives. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from the fact that this pure happiness is usually only achieved after suffering some great hardships. In this mechanistic modern world, our primordial instincts for survival are often left untested, driving us to seek out those places where life is still hard.